rate of women and maintaining a high birth rate. Also, certain practices in the labor market, such as age discrimination, need to be reformed in order to make use of middle- and old-aged labor force; and at the same time, we should try to smooth out wage-productivity discrepancy by raising productivity and introducing a wage ceiling. Also, instead of focusing on simply utilizing unskilled foreign labor force, we need to establish a new policy to attract highly skilled foreign workers as a means of coping with the manpower shortage in science and technology.
Second, in order to eliminate the qualitative imbalance, we need to rebuild infrastructure including the national qualification system and encourage industry-academia cooperation to help create a school-to-work liaison. Also, in order to nurture competitive human resources, demand-oriented education reforms and the establishment of a lifelong learning society are necessary.
Despite growing participation in higher education, the high youth unemployment rate and a scarcity of science and technology manpower are a result of the imbalance in skills composition between human resources demand and supply. Hence, it is necessary to build a signal system of, for instance, providing new statistics and developing an information network that will help education institutions to easily accommodate the changes occurring in the labor market. At the same time, it is important to nurture skilled workers through reforming the education system in terms of curriculum and the school system itself. Furthermore, entrenching a lifelong learning system is an essential measure to overcome the obsolescence of knowledge and technology.
Third, it is true that the enhancement of human resources utilization is no less important than the accumulation of human resources. In the near future, Korea will face drastic changes in industry structure resulting from the rapid growth in services and IT industries, and from the decline in the self-employed. Furthermore, in order to cope with labor shortages in the coming aged society while sustaining economic growth, labor mobility should be improved to ease the transition from the sectors with low productivity to those with high productivity. Simultaneously, we need to strengthen vocational ability through ongoing investment. Nurturing skilled manpower is not easily accomplished. School education and the vocational
training system should be continuously reformed based on long-term forecasts for human resources demand and supply in industries and occupations. Finally, it is necessary to help the lifelong career planning of people according to their aptitudes and innate abilities by providing reliable information on future trends in the labor market.
2
I
CHAPTER
HRD Policies and Strategies
Sung-Joon Paik Hyung-Mann Kim
N JANUARY 2001 THE KOREAN GOVERNMENT elevated the Ministry of Education (MOE) to the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MOE & HRD) and promoted its head to deputy prime minister, who is entitled to oversee and coordinate all major HRD-related policies. That action was perhaps inevitable in order to help Korea prepare for the challenges of the 21st century. Most leading countries have reorganized HRD-related ministries and government agencies and reformed education and training systems in order to implement HRD policies in more systematic ways.
In a knowledge-based economy, knowledge and technology have become more crucial than material resources in an industrial economy. Creation, dissemination and utilization of new knowledge depend upon the abilities of individuals and firms, which improve as various learning opportunities are provided. However, not everyone is provided with equal opportunity to acquire and utilize new knowledge. The lack of opportunity to acquire knowledge, along with the rapid expansion of new knowledge, results in the problem of a ‘digital divide’. Countries that cannot cope with this problem could end up being reduced to second-class countries. Economic and social changes in a knowledge-based society require all citizens to have capabilities to acquire and manage knowledge, through which consequently a country achieves social integration internally, and enhances its competitiveness in the global market. In other words, we are facing a new wave in the global economy in which the quality of acountry’s human resources determines not only national competitiveness, but also the quality of one’s life.
Recently, Korea has come across various economic and social challenges:
the emergence of the BRICs accelerates the reshuffling of the order of the world economy; economic integration among countries promotes the opening of a country’s market to other countries; Korea will soon turn into an aged society; and developing countries including China are expected to outperform Korea soon and make inroads into the global market in the fields of middle- and high-end technology industries. These developments imply that Korea needs to constantly analyze changes in internal and external economic and social environments and to keep renewing objectives and strategies for developing and managing human resources.
This chapter intends to provide a broad overview of Korea’s human resources development strategies. First, the concepts of human resources and human resources development at the national level are discussed.
Secondly, the main contents of Korea’s HRD policies are explained based on ‘The National Human Resources Development Strategies for Korea’, which was promulgated in December 2001. Furthermore, recommendations for improving organizational scheme for the successful implementation of HRD policies are suggested. In addition, human resources development strategies at the regional level will be briefly discussed.